Shocker! 1986 World Series Ball Fails to Sell for $1 Million

By
Trey Treutel |
Oct 26, 2011

The infamous ball that was muffed by Bill Buckner during the 1986 World Series failed to sell following an eBay auction that started at a million dollars.

We previously wrote about the auction that ended exactly 25 years after Buckner made his ill-fated grab for the Mookie Wilson grounder. Although the item is an important piece of sports history, the steep price was a wild over-estimation of the ball's drawing power. It would have been much more exciting to let the market set the value of the ball by making the sale a true auction with a very low opening bid.

There are multiple reasons to explain why the ball is just not that valuable. First, the signature by Mookie Wilson may increase the value slightly but this one event is the main reason why a lot of people still remember his name.

The ball is little more than a novelty item. It can be most closely compared to the infamous Steve Bartman ball. The down economy has not diminished interest in high-end collectibles, but this is not a great time to expect frivolous spending.

Also, the same ball has changed hands twice and the value paid actually went down from $93,000 to $64,000 over an eight-year period. There is no reason to expect the ball's value to increase so much simply because of an anniversary.

At this point, the seller, Seth Swirsky, would be lucky to get $100,000. No matter if the ball sells, the move garnered a lot of cheap publicity, with the auction getting more than 12,000 views.

From here, there is no information regarding further plans for the sale of the ball. It is doubtful that we have heard the last of the ball that forever branded Buckner as the scorn of the Red Sox faithful.

It is interesting to note that the under-bidder during both of the ball's previous sales was political commentator, Keith Olbermann. Perhaps he will contact Swirsky after all this is over and finally claim the prize he was once after.

Trey Treutel | E-Mail | URL
Trey Treutel is an Ole Miss grad and a lifelong sports fanatic. He is a huge fan of the NBA and NFL, as well as soccer, college basketball and college football. As a kid, he collected football and basketball cards. As an adult, he started collecting basketball cards again on a whim and has since expanded to other sports and entertainment options. Find Trey on Twitter at @datreute.